It loves you, it loves you not. Microsoft kicks off festive Bing campaign

Microsoft has kicked off a festive campaign for its Bing search engine. With Valentine's Day soon approaching, the male populous will ascend on these mighty portals of vast searchfulness for ideas on how to either woo a desired female, or make their way out of the dog house. Taking advantage of the popular celebration of love, the company is asking "what do you consider the most important quality in a partner?"

Microsoft ran a survey asking that very question and has presented the results in the chart below:

"A surprising one in 10 people have ended a relationship on arguably the most romantic day of the year. This year Bing is challenging people to reconsider their search habit and break up with Google. You wouldn’t keep dating someone who isn’t trustworthy, so why use a search engine known for serving its interests over your own? In fact, a whopping 85 percent of people report that trustworthiness is the most important trait in a mate, beating out good in bed, sense of humor and wealth."

Trustworthiness is certainly a good start! Which is exactly what Microsoft hopes to offer with Bing. Wealth, sense of humour and performance under the sheets can come with future algorithm alterations, but trustworthiness is key for not only human partners, but search engines themselves. The company has previously hit out at Google for its invasive marketing and advertising techniques, and now the main search engine is being targeted once again.

So what are the reasons that will help consumers switch from Google to Bing? The following are provided by Microsoft:

Google Shopping displays adverts only from merchants that pay for such placement and ranking. Bing offers honest results so you get the best deals from across the Web.

The Bing Snapshot feature includes one-click access for booking reservations or buying tickets so you have more time for doing and spend less time searching.

Bing keeps you and your friends connected with friends being pulled from both Facebook and Twitter. Just last month there were new updates to the social sidebar, which mean even more available content from your Facebook friends right within search results. A quick search on Bing will show you not only main results but also which friends have liked those search results and posted status updates, comments, photos and more about them.

Bing won’t spoil your sweetheart’s surprise with the disable history option. Perfect for using the search engine for either gift ideas or 4chan image searches.

Bing offers unique rewards (or tokens of affection) for using the service as it was designed to be used. Just searching enables you to earn Amazon and Starbucks gift cards, free Xbox LIVE and Hulu Plus subscriptions, as well as donations to charities.

Bing has come a long way since it was launched back in 2009. Microsoft has been slowly building up its share of the search market since and has attempted to come across as "Good guy Microsoft" to consumers with attempts to win the hearts of frequent searchers. Whether this campaign will take off or not remains to be seen, but the search engine is definitely worth considering in the race.

I have probably been using Google for over 10 years and switched to using Bing mostly (not exclusively, if I look for stuff in my native language I still prefer Google. But I would say I use Bing more than 50% now) and I don't have reason to look back. The start was a bit rough, but that was primarily down to me being used to the way Google arranges search results. But as for the results themselves, I found Bing and Google to be on equal footing most of the time, sometimes one being better than the other. Overall, it was a good decision to remove myself further from the Google ecosystem.

I've used Google since I was a kid, but have switched to Bing two years ago when I found out it gave better search results than Google. When it started Bing was really bad, but now it always gives me the results I want. I rarely have to go past the third result on the first page.

I use Bing exclusively for search. It's convenient. Its algorithms produce pertinent results. it's built into my L920, Surface tablet, and rickety, old HP DV 2500, running Win 8 Pro. Plus, the Bing Rewards are adding up nicely, to afford me free WP apps. Notice that all the promotional gimmicks are listed well behind convenience, and pertinent search results. I also value highly, the fact that I don't feel data mined, at Matrix-level Mach One, as Google makes my info their main product.

I switched to Bing (use to be Live) a long time ago. I always thought their results were pretty similar, but I preferred Bing for two reasons. Their picture of the day and their interface. I know it may seem silly, but its nice to see a new beautiful pic of the day. Also, at the time I switched, they had a page preview feature which Google didn't. However, I have to admit that has changed. While Google introduced a very nice page preview feature, Bing has actually removed theirs. They replaced it with a column for displaying Facebook results. At first this angered me because the Facebook crap was completely useless. Over time though I have noticed more and more results under the Facebook column. Its slowly becoming possibly useful. Anyways there is a 3rd reason I use Bing now, Rewards. With Bing Rewards I haven't had to pay money for a Redbox in a long time. I still use Google for two things though, News and traffic. Hope that helps.

When i bought Lumia 710 last year then i started using Bing satisfied with the results and never really went back to Google recent google actions on YouTube for WP made me hate google now im using only YouTube from Google.
Now I'm a Binger!

I switched to Bing a year or two ago. One of my main drivers was that Google replaces result link with Google's tracking link so if you copy\paste for quick reference you don't get link you really want. Only use Google on rare occasion I need to make use of time filtering (I.e. Results within last week, month, etc)

But of course I Bing, I used to be one of those people who thought that there is no other search engines like Google, I switched to Bing 2 years ago and I love it, Google results where confusing for me most of the time, and I am not talking about simple one or two words searches, I am talking about complicated searches.
Also Bing travel is one of the best things ever created.

I was an off-and-on Binger starting in about 2010. I really wanted to bail on Google, but found in Bing's early days that Google's results were better. So I would periodically try Bing, but was still primarily a Googler. When Bing Rewards started, I would do my 20 Bing searches a day, and then switch back to Google. But over time, I found that Bing's results were constantly improving and were catching up to and sometimes surpassing Google. About 14 months ago, I switched completely to Bing. No regrets. I've steadily divorced myself from all other Google services, with the exception of Youtube. And if Bing / MS can come up with an alternative to that, I'll support it day one.

I Bing because google would not work on one of my Android phone same with my friend who had problem with lag with google..
my wife and her sister use Bing for the picture of the day we are turning into a windows family

Correct. That's the most powerful advertising engine, when your brand becomes synonymous with the product or service in this case. These are firmly persistent but not permanent nor insurmountable in the face of directed advertising. Examples include "Hand me a Kleenex" which now has slowly evolved to "Hand me a tissue" and how Coca-Cola had everyone using the term "Coke" to refer to any type of soda. Both of those have slowly weakened over time. Would I happen to have any Bing? But of course...

I primarily started using Bing for the rewards program. Les than 2 months and I'm a gold member. I've earned enough rewards to redeem just about anything they offer: free redbox, free Starbucks, free amazon...FREE STUFF!

But I still think Bing does little to differentiate itself from Google. The search market is dead and Google won. Just like MS won the Desktop. They need to reinvent search (not just add social) and show people why they are different. They should be more than just blue links.

In the UK, I don't have access to Bing's social features, rewards or - I'm pretty sure - snapshot. I continue to use it because of its tendrils into other Microsoft services, but I can certainly understand why so many people use Google here. It needs sorting!

I mostly Google/yahoo/duckduckgo, to be honest, as Bing doesn't work very well where I live (still in Beta, no date filtering, fewer and less relevant search results than google, none of the cool stuff like rewards, being able to buy stuff, and so on). I tried using the Bing toolbar for a while, but it slowed down IE too much, so I removed it.

Imho, MS needs to work much, much harder to make Bing a better search engine globally. It's not just that in lots of places, Bing doesn't work well or doesn't offer many features, another problem is that "to google" became a synonym for searching. Us people here might be aware of the alternatives, but ask any average user which search engine he or she knows. I predict most will answer: google.

Not being a native english speaker, I sometimes wondered why the searchengine was called "Bing" - that was until I watched the film Groundhog Day (so funny - if you haven't watched it yet, do it)
Watch this clip where Bill Murray doesn't exactly go "Bing" when he meets Ned Ryerson. BTW you can often find alternatives to using YouTube if you do a video search using Bing. Append "-youtube" in your query to get rid of youtube links.